Haunted
by idreamofdraco
Summary: When Hermione Granger returned to Hogwarts to complete her ruined seventh year, she expected to help heal the wounds left behind by the war. She never expected to be hated by the student body or haunted by her own personal ghosts—among which she could count Draco Malfoy, her most frustrating haunt of all.
1. Chapter One

_December 20, 2014  
>Author's Note: This story was written for Interhouse Fest 2014. The prompt will follow at the end of the chapter.<em>

_It looks like I'm returning to my roots! This prompt jumped out at me during the fest, and I was inspired to give Draco/Hermione another try. I haven't written DHr since I finished Dark Skies in 2009, so we'll see how it goes. I hope whoever reads this likes it, and if you do, please leave a review! For my Draco/Ginny followers, I still have plenty of DG in me. New updates and brand new stories are still in our future. ;)_

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><p><strong>Haunted<strong>

**Chapter One**

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><p>The torchlight flickered against the walls, casting agitated shadows every ten feet or so down the corridor. Outside, Hermione could hear how the wind beat against the side of the castle, howling like an angry beast intent on entering the walls even if it had to bash its way inside. The air whistled through every corridor Hermione encountered, and as she entered the second hour of her patrol, she feared the ghosts of Hogwarts were following her.<p>

Not ghosts like Nearly Headless Nick or the Bloody Baron, disconcerting as their sudden appearances and disappearances naturally were. The ghosts that haunted Hermione were the ones that held no form and made no sound. They were the memento mori of a battle waged inside the walls of the school and the students and friends who had fallen victim to tyranny as they sacrificed their lives.

For what?

That was the question that plagued Hermione as she stalked the halls, conducting her rounds as Head Girl.

When she'd returned to Hogwarts to make up for her ruined seventh year, she'd never imagined the grief and anger that would linger from that final, fateful battle. And when she'd accepted the position of Head Girl—a position Headmistress McGonagall had thought appropriate considering Hermione's seniority and experiences during the war—she'd never imagined how out of her depth she would be. As usual, Hermione had considered her options logically and then acted in the best interests of everyone, but she always forgot about the human element when she made her decisions. That was her tragic flaw. She'd just wanted to help, but for what?

Hermione heard a creak like a cabinet opening and paused, tilting her head to listen over the sound of the storm. She approached a door and opened it cautiously, remembering her first patrol as Head Girl nearly two weeks prior.

The sounds of crying had echoed through the second floor corridor from the girls' toilet where Moaning Myrtle resided. But if Myrtle had been the lone crier, Hermione might not have found herself in her current hated predicament. Instead, Myrtle was nowhere to be found and Hermione had discovered a sobbing fourth year instead.

Peering inside the stall with caution, she'd called out, "Hello? Are you all right in there?" A silly question, that, and the occupant must have thought so as well because the girl was suddenly overcome with a case of overwhelming hiccups. Then, when she saw who it was disturbing her grief, the fourth year's eyes had grown wide with shock.

What Hermione had said next could have won a prize for least comforting words ever spoken in the history of mankind: "It's nearly curfew. If you aren't injured, you really need to return to your common room." True enough words, but tactless in the current situation. The fourth year had run out of the toilet, crying with renewed vigor. The next day, her sixth year brother had tracked Hermione down and informed her with impotent rage that their mother had died in the battle that past May, taking Hermione to task for her lack of sympathy. The story had spread, and now Hermione's presence was met with glares wherever she went. Not what she had hoped for when she'd returned to Hogwarts and accepted her Head Girl badge from McGonagall.

Hermione knew suffering. She understood loss and grief and anger, but she didn't know how to relate to people. She'd wanted to be Head Girl because she'd hoped to shepherd the students of Hogwarts through their mutual grief, and instead she'd only hurt them further.

She wished she could say the fourth year girl had been the only casualty of her tactlessness, but there were plenty of other students that she'd managed to offend in some way or another, just by sheer lack of understanding. The only people to continue to grudgingly support her were the core members of Dumbledore's Army: Ginny, Neville, and Luna. Had Harry and Ron returned to Hogwarts, Hermione doubted they would have taken her side in the disputes. They had never seen her side of things when they'd argued throughout the years; why would this situation be any different?

Frowning with bitterness, Hermione entered the empty classroom and discovered the source of the creaking sound she'd heard, which had, in fact, belonged to a cabinet rustled by the wind surging through an open window. Closing both the cabinet and the window, Hermione banished thoughts of Harry and Ron from her mind, as she usually did. It hurt too much to think of their abandonment. Especially Ron's.

She continued on her patrol of the fourth-floor corridor, slowly making her way down to the lowest levels of the castle to complete her duties for the night.

In the dungeons, the storm outside Hogwarts did not exist, and the eerie silence of the underground corridors exacerbated the unease in Hermione's mind. Voices, muted through the stone walls but still discernable, accosted her when she turned a corner, and she sighed. It was after hours, and she was still on duty, so she had to investigate.

She turned another corner to see a student standing in front of a portrait halfway down the corridor, his body strained with tension and his fists clenched at his sides. He was an older student, and the patch on his school robes placed him in Slytherin.

"My parents are not traitors, you mangy hypocrite!"

Hermione couldn't hear the portrait's response—or see the painting's occupant—from her stance at the end of the corridor. When she made to move closer, the sound of her feet hardly made a sound, and yet the boy was alerted to her presence and drew back from the wall in haste. He'd already been tense before, but he froze up even more upon seeing Hermione.

"Never mind," the boy spat at the portrait, and then he backed away from Hermione, his hands in the air. "I'm leaving, I'm leaving. Don't take any bloody points for Circe's sake."

"I wasn't—" she started, but he suddenly stopped and cut her off, his jaw clenched in stubborn defiance of her supposed authority.

"You think you're so important, but you're an idiot for thinking any of this even matters anymore. Everyone thinks you're delusional. And mean."

With a disgusted sneer, he took off down the corridor before Hermione could respond. Not that she would have known what to say.

She knew how the students felt about her. Hostility followed her wherever she went, and part of her had wondered if maybe they were just channeling their anger from the war onto the easiest target. Harry and Ron weren't there to stand up for her, and even though Ginny, Neville, and Luna commanded a lot of respect from the student body, their defense of Hermione went ignored.

Still, even if the students weren't really angry at her, their treatment of her still hurt. Hermione didn't think she was more important than anyone else, and she enforced the school rules as strictly as she did because she didn't know what else to do. She'd heard what Hogwarts had been like under the leadership of Snape and the Carrows, but she hadn't lived it, so maybe she didn't really understand where the students were coming from. Still… she thought they would want to return to something that resembled normalcy at Hogwarts, and part of that normalcy was keeping to school rules about curfew and acceptable behavior. Any deviance from those rules naturally resulted in the loss of House points. What else was Hermione supposed to do?

She swiped at her eyes with an angry gesture, and then quickly wiped her hands on her robes. The end of her patrol and the oblivion of her bed were just in sight when she reached the last corridor of the dungeons, only to be stopped by the sight of a mob blocking the stairs up to the first floor. That's exactly what it was, she decided as she hurried down the corridor, for a group of six students had cornered one student against the wall. The aggressors were of various ages and, based on their uniforms, represented the Houses of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw. They were also armed, the tips of their wands sparking with errant magic.

The identity of the student they had cornered became clear as Hermione approached the group. The glint of the platinum blonde hair in the light of the torch above his head gave her pause, but she had her responsibilities, so she was spurred back into action.

"Break it up!" she called. "You are all supposed to be in bed right now. I could give you detention for dueling!"

As she broke into the center of the group, she realized they weren't actually dueling—fairly, anyway. Draco Malfoy stood against the wall, his hands balled into fists at his sides but otherwise empty as far as she could tell. A Hufflepuff girl took a step back, and a strange scraping sound accompanied the movement.

_"Accio!"_ Hermione called, pointing her wand at the ground. The girl wobbled as a wand zoomed out from under her foot into Hermione's hand. It was Malfoy's. Disgusted, Hermione scowled at the six students, and they met her glare with impertinent glares of their own. She didn't know the names of all of the students, but she recognized Thea Hastings, a new first year Gryffindor, and Dennis Creevey.

"When I tell your Heads of Houses—"

"Sod off, Granger!"

She spun back around to meet Malfoy's glare, which was the worst of all, his whole face full of contempt and his jaw clenched tight like he wanted to rip her throat out with his teeth. His body shook with the force of his derision. He swept his gaze down her body and then back up, and then he snorted as if to dismiss what he had seen.

"No one asked you to butt in, you stupid Mudblood," he said with a dry, scoffing laugh.

Hermione took a step back. None of the other students rushed in to defend her. Instead, they looked at her with defiance in their eyes, as if she were interrupting and they expected her to leave them to it.

She straightened her spine and steeled herself. It was time that she take control back from the students of Hogwarts. She was the Head Girl here, not them!

"Fighting is strictly forbidden and it is after hours. If you do not return to your common rooms at once—"

"Mind your own business and leave," Malfoy spat, taking an unsteady step away from the wall.

The light from the torch shone on him better now, and Hermione saw why Malfoy was trembling. His robes were ripped in places, and a large, bleeding gash striped his thigh, from the inside of his knee nearly all the way up to the outside of his hip.

"You need to see Madame Pomfrey," she said, her eyes fastened on the blood-soaked material of his robes. A puddle had formed under him, and the blood seemed to absorb the light, reflecting the inky shadows of the corridor instead of the torchlight. The sight made her stomach roil, reminding her of how she had splinched Ron when she'd Apparated them away from Malfoy Manor to Grimmauld Place and then to the Forest of Dean in quick succession earlier that year.

"How many times do I have to say it? Fuck. Off."

Hermione gasped as he closed the distance between them and grabbed her upper arms, shoving her with such force that she fell onto the ground. She looked up at the seven students in front of her, all staring at her with creased brows and angry wrinkles at the corners of their mouths. She didn't see a single glimmer of concern or recognition in their eyes. She could have been a Death Eater for all they cared.

Malfoy pushed to the front of the group to sneer at her. "My aunt should have finished you off when she had the chance," he said. "You don't know how to keep your Mudblood nose out of other people's affairs."

Her breath sucked in in a sibilant hiss that seemed to echo in the corridor, though the echo must have only been in her mind. The cold steel of a knife ghosted across her limbs, and for a moment, Hermione was transported back several months to Easter weekend. She could still hear Ron's voice screaming her name in between her own screams as Bellatrix Lestrange pierced her skin and let blood run free. This past summer, when Hermione had thought about her torture, Ron's voice had brought her pleasure. That he had cared so much for her to beg to be taken in her place had made her flush with unbridled joy. But now there was nothing remotely pleasurable about the memory. Maybe Ron had meant it when he'd screamed it, but he was off with Harry training to be an Auror now. She'd been so stupid to think he would have chosen her over Harry.

She shivered at the memory of the knife and rubbed the inside of her forearm where the word 'Mudblood' still lingered as a faint scar. Her screams and Ron's disappeared as she returned to the present, to Draco Malfoy and six other students staring at her in contempt.

Hermione had suffered too much to be treated this way by anyone. No, she hadn't been at Hogwarts under the Carrows, but she'd fought her own demons, people like Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort himself. The weight of the entire war had rested on Harry's shoulders, and she'd put her lot in with his, so she'd carried some of the burden, too. For anyone to dismiss her because she didn't understand what they'd gone through was foolishness. It was stupidity.

She picked herself up off the floor and straightened her spine as she met Dennis Creevey's eyes. "Filch is patrolling the Great Hall. He should be down here any minute now," she said, her voice hard and cold like steel. "Don't get caught."

He nodded, instantly understanding her meaning as she turned around to flee the scene.

The sounds of knuckles beating flesh followed her up the stairs, and it wasn't until she'd arrived back at Gryffindor Tower, dazed, lost in memory, and—most of all—hurt, that she realized she was still holding Malfoy's wand.

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><p><strong>TBC<strong>

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><p><strong>Original Prompt<strong>

**Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?br  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> Any  
><strong>Squicks:<strong> None  
><strong>Other comments:<strong> Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


	2. Chapter Two

_January 1, 2015  
>Author's Note: Reviews appreciated!<br>_

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><p><strong>Haunted<strong>

**Chapter Two**

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><p>The next morning, Hermione took her place next to Ginny at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, but the thought of eating made her stomach heave. She'd tossed and turned all night long, regretting what she'd done—what she'd allowed—in the dungeons. What if Malfoy reported her to a teacher? As Head Girl, she should have punished, or at least reported, all seven students for being out of bed past curfew and for fighting. She should have stopped it. Instead, she'd let her anger and loneliness take over her judgment. Instead, she'd left Malfoy there to be beaten by six people. What if he did go to a teacher? What could she possibly say to explain her actions? The truth was hardly an excuse and she could already hear Professor McGonagall's disappointed lecture.<p>

What if she lost her badge?

No, the plates of bacon, eggs, and sausages in front of her nauseated her further, so Hermione poured herself a glass of orange juice instead. The acidity burned all the way down her esophagus to pool in her stomach, far from relieving her compulsion to throw up.

"All right, Hermione?" Ginny asked, making her jump. Ron's sister looked at her with concerned eyes, but there was a tightness to her lips that always worried Hermione.

Was that tightness a sign of Ginny's suffering from the past year? Or was it a sign that Ginny didn't care as much for Hermione as Hermione hoped? She couldn't interpret the Weasley's expression clearly anymore, which was a strange phenomenon since Weasleys were typically so emotional that they wore their emotions openly, whether they wanted to or not. But Ginny had had to learn new skills in the last year, and as one of the leaders of the rebellion at Hogwarts, she'd faced things the other students of Hogwarts hadn't had the misfortune to face. The tightness, the unreadable expressions, perhaps they were merely traces of the hard skin she'd developed in the last year. Perhaps they weren't the signs of dislike that Hermione feared they were.

"Yes," Hermione answered. "I didn't sleep well last night is all, and I don't feel very well today."

"Maybe you should go see Madame Pomfrey," Neville suggested from across the table. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Lots of students have been having a hard time this year, and she's been helping them as much as she can. Professor Slughorn can't brew Dr. Ubbly's Oblivious Unction fast enough to keep it in supply."

"How would you know that?" Ginny asked, and then she blanched. "I mean, you don't have to answer that—"

Neville waved her concern away with a rueful smile. "Nah, it's all right. I've been helping with the potions stores. I mostly help Professor Sprout harvest and prepare ingredients, but sometimes I help Madame Pomfrey catalog the inventory. I've noticed that the Hospital Wing is always busy these days, and Oblivious Unction is in short supply."

Both Hermione and Ginny nodded, grim with understanding.

"Besides," Neville continued as he turned his gaze down to his plate, his fork mixing all his food together in a jumbled heap. "I've been taking some Dr. Ubbly's every now and then, too. The memories, you know. Madame Pomfrey says they can leave scars."

Hermione had been impressed with Neville when she, Harry, and Ron had met up with him again at the Hog's Head before the Battle of Hogwarts. He'd changed. Matured. Grown into a confidence that they'd only glimpsed in him throughout the years. She hadn't thought before what the cost of that growth had been to him. Now she could see that he'd lost some of his innocence in the rebellion against the Carrows. Who hadn't, though?

"I'm fine. It's not that serious," Hermione said softly. "Patrol last night was just…."

"Did someone attack you again?" Ginny asked, a savage glint in her eyes.

Hermione looked from the crease in Ginny's brow to her choking grip on her fork and felt warmth well up inside her at her friend's ferocious concern. "No, not exactly. At least, no one threw a spell at me this time."

At that moment, Dennis Creevey walked by behind Neville, and his eyes met hers. He nodded briefly before turning away to claim a seat at the end of the table. Hermione turned around, scanning the thin group of Slytherins dispersed along their own table for a sign of platinum blond, but Malfoy wasn't there.

She gulped and met Ginny's eyes again, but only briefly as shame forced her to look away. "I might have done something I shouldn't have."

As she detailed in nervous whispers about her rounds the night before, she noticed Ginny's grip on her fork loosen. Both she and Neville returned to eating their breakfasts as they listened, their expressions unconcerned.

At the end of Hermione's tale, Ginny shrugged. "So? He deserves it. And you might have won some points with Dennis and the others. Maybe they'll spread the word and everyone will let up on you."

Hermione leaned back, scandalized. "I don't want the word to spread! I ignored my duty as Head Girl and let six students attack one unarmed student. What if Malfoy tells someone? What if I lose my badge?"

Ginny shrugged. "Maybe you need to decide what you want more: to be respected by the student body or an authority over it. Clearly you can't be both."

Neville nodded, his mouth full of sausage.

"Well, how did you two do it? How did you command respect and authority from the students last year?"

There was a slight pause as Ginny thoughtfully took a drink of her pumpkin juice before she answered. "They needed someone to stand up for them. They needed someone to fight for them. You get Crucio-ed a few times in the middle of the Great Hall, you're bound to gain some respect. We took the fall for them as much as possible, and they appreciated it. But it's not like that anymore. We're all safe now. They don't need someone to stick up for them; they need someone to explain why it still hurts, why they're still afraid. Can you do that?"

The enormity of such a task was overwhelming. Hermione had answers to thousands of questions asked and unasked, but she didn't know why old scars still stung or why the ghosts in her memories continued to haunt her. And if she didn't know for herself, she certainly couldn't explain it for anyone else.

She shook her head, avoiding both Neville's and Ginny's eyes.

"Sounds like you've got your answer, then," Ginny said, and with that, the topic was dismissed.

Luckily, owls flew into the Great Hall with the post, preventing Hermione from her annoying habit of not letting things go. She scanned the rafters for a familiar owl, just as she did every morning, and her heart leapt in her chest when Pigwidgeon zig-zagged through the air to the Gryffindor table, landing in the butter dish in front of Hermione.

"Is that from Harry?" Ginny asked, but Hermione had already grabbed Pig and started to make off with him out of the Great Hall to read the letter in privacy. She was feet away before Ginny had opened her mouth.

She arrived on the landing of the second floor corridor when Pig escaped the confines of her hands and began to zoom around her head like a fluffy, annoying bee. Used to his antics, she stopped instead of reaching for him, allowing him to calm himself down enough to perch on her shoulder voluntarily.

"Good owl," she said, reaching over to pet him gently with a finger. He nuzzled against her and let out a contented hoot. "I guess you deserve a couple treats for being such a good boy."

She turned to continue up the stairs and froze, a shiver shooting down her spine and dread filling her stomach.

"Going somewhere?" Malfoy asked, slowly descending the stairs like a snake stalking its mousey prey.

Hermione didn't say anything, just watched, afraid of what he would do. Not genuinely afraid. No, she didn't fear him. But he was still a sneaky coward, and there was no telling what he meant to say or do to her. She kept her hands down at her side, her wand slipping from the holster on her forearm into her hand, where she could draw it in a hurry if necessary.

He descended to the landing and stopped, keeping his distance. One eyebrow cocked up as he said, "Nothing to say? What's wrong, cat got your tongue?"

"Can I help you with something?" she asked with a sneer. Her confidence took a hit as she noticed scratches on his face and a swollen bruise around his eye. She'd let that happen to him and done nothing to stop it.

"Actually, you can." He smirked when her eyes widened in shock, and he took several steps closer until he towered over her. An intimidation tactic, certainly. Well, Hermione wouldn't be swayed, not by his words or his proximity! "As I recall, you stole my wand last night."

"I did no such—!" Oh, but she had. It might have been an accident, but it was true that Hermione still possessed his wand after confiscating it from the Hufflepuff student the previous night. Changing tracks, she composed herself and replied, "I don't have it on me at the moment."

"Good thing it's Saturday. Means we have plenty of time to go retrieve it, don't we?"

She darted around him to climb the stairs, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. "I'm busy right now. You can collect it later."

"No, Granger," he growled, and before Hermione knew what was happening, he'd spun her around and pinned her to a wall with a hand at her shoulder. Pigwidgeon flew off with a high-pitched screech, leaving Hermione to Malfoy's mercy. "We will collect it now."

"Or what?" she challenged. He craned over her and she had to lift her chin to meet his eyes, but she didn't shy away from the hatred she saw there. She'd seen too much of that from her fellow students in the last two weeks, and his hatred pained her least of anyone else's.

He bared his teeth as if it took all his strength not to snap at her—like a wild animal—and his palm dug into her shoulder painfully, but Hermione didn't flinch.

"Or I'll tell McGonagall what you did last night. Or, should I say, what you didn't do?"

She knew the color had drained from her face because all the blood in her head went straight down to her suddenly shaky knees. She became grateful for Malfoy's bitter grip holding her up even as she hated him for blackmailing her.

"Fine," she said through her teeth, which threatened to shatter with the force of her clenched jaws. "I'll go get your wand."

"Good girl." He patted her cheek with a pleased smirk and then released her, and she took him off guard by shoving him away from her.

"Don't you 'good girl' me!" Before he knew what was happening, her wand was drawn and pointed directly at his pointy nose. Needless to say, the smirk fell off his face at that. "You may think dirty tricks will get you everything you want, but you're still an evil little toad and everyone knows it."

The blaze in Malfoy's eyes spoke of how much he loathed her—mutual on her part, of course. If looks could kill, his would have sliced her into bloody ribbons. Hermione hardly felt threatened by that look, and even though his fingers curled into talons, she didn't fear him grabbing her again. She had the wand, not he; he was powerless.

"Better the evil everyone knows than the one they don't," he snarled.

Hermione had never seen him look so animalistic and unhinged. While she didn't fear him, she was wary of him. A cornered animal was capable of anything. "What do you mean by that?"

"Everyone would expect me to walk away from the scene of a fight if my enemy was the one losing it, but you?" He laughed, a forced, emotionless bark of sound. "Would Hermione Granger really let someone suffer under her watch? Even someone she hates?"

Her wand lowered involuntarily as she stared at him, unaware of the deranged smile that lit her face. Malfoy saw it, and a look of confused uncertainty crossed his features, just for a moment.

"You obviously don't know what I'm capable of," she said in a sneering voice. The images of a beetle in a jar and centaurs carrying Dolores Umbridge deep into the Forbidden Forest crossed her mind before she banished them away. "And that's not an empty boast." She turned away, not waiting for Malfoy as she climbed the stairs. "Besides," she added halfway up the staircase, just as he began to ascend behind her, "Do you really think anyone would care what happened to you?"

He said nothing and shoved past her, making her laugh in that same humorless fashion he had just moments ago.

"The teachers would have to pretend to care, of course. The students? They want to see you suffer for what you and your family did—"

"Shut up! SHUT UP!"

Hermione found herself shoved against a wall again, both of Malfoy's hands on her shoulders, inches away from the smooth column of her neck. Her wand fell to the floor as his fingers pressed into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises and his arms shook with the raw emotion coursing through him. If she thought she'd seen hatred in his eyes earlier, she'd been wrong. That had been mere dislike. This look, this lack of awareness of his actions, this indifference to the pain he caused her, the deep wrinkle in his forehead where his brows drew down into the angriest lines she'd ever seen on a man's face—this was malice, and it burned her straight down to her stomach, kindling the fire of her own intense revulsion.

"Or what?" she whispered. "You'll write home to daddy?"

"SHUT UP!"

He was shaking her now, and the back of Hermione's head kept hitting the stone behind her, though she didn't think he meant to bash her skull in. Regardless of his intentions, he was clearly out of control, and Hermione would have a headache (or worse) for the rest of the day if she couldn't get him to stop soon. Unfortunately, his grip was too strong as she ineffectually battled with him. His rage made him unstoppable.

"OI! What the effing hell are you doing, Malfoy?"

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief as Ginny pulled Malfoy off her. He stumbled backwards, teetering close to the edge of the stairs, and he shook his head, his eyes clearing as if suddenly becoming aware of his surroundings, but that loathing and anger still remained in the tightness around his mouth. He looked between Ginny and Hermione, who had a shaking hand to her head as if to protect it from a new onslaught, and then he turned away, retreating down the stairs without a word.

"Hey!" Hermione called, taking a step forward to stop him. "Where do you think you're going?"

He ignored her, skipping two steps at a time, nearly leaping down the staircase. He looked more like he was fleeing, but if he felt so awful for what he'd done, why didn't he apologize?

"Malfoy, I'm warning you!"

He stopped then, throwing a disgusted glance at her, though she hardly noticed. Ginny came to Hermione's side, one hand on Hermione's back, the other on her drawn wand. Hermione felt better for her presence—and foolish for thinking Malfoy wouldn't hurt her. There was nothing he wouldn't do when cornered and desperate. She shouldn't have forgotten that.

"What, Granger? Going to take points from me? Take them all! No one cares about your stupid points!"

She clenched her trembling hands and straightened her spine. She was never going to win Malfoy's respect, so she was free to use her authority.

"You'll serve detention tonight for… for attacking a student. Seven o'clock, outside Professor McGonagall's office."

His eyes rolled upwards and a ghost of a smirk returned to his lips. Well… at least she'd amused him, she thought bitterly.

"Or what?" he asked, his arms falling open in front of him as if begging her to give him her best shot. She didn't have a best shot, or even any mediocre ones for that matter. She only had the head on her shoulders and her ghosts ever haunting her.

"Or I'll tell Professor McGonagall, and then the Ministry will hear all about it. Fighting is against your probation, isn't it? We'd hate for you to have to drop out of school to finish your sentence of house arrest. Or would you get sent to Azkaban to sit in a cell with your father?"

She didn't know why she was taunting him, but there was something about his stupid smirk and the hate in his eyes that provoked her, made her want to be the worst Hermione Granger she had ever been. Even Ginny was staring at her, her mouth slightly open in disbelief but her eyes wary. That disbelief kind of stung Hermione, who'd done a lot of things during the war to keep Harry, Ron, and herself alive. Everyone had changed in some way during the last year, so why was Hermione's coldness a surprise?

Malfoy had paled at her pronouncement, his lips falling into his own expression of disbelief. The anger was still there, buried underneath the surface, and as the shock wore off, Hermione saw something that looked a lot like fear cross his face. He didn't say anything as he stalked away, down the stairs and presumably to breakfast or the dungeons. As he fled, Hermione noticed his limping gait. A product of the slash down his leg from the previous night?

As she continued her ascent up the stairs, Ginny following cautiously behind, she wondered why he hadn't healed his leg or at least received something for the pain. But she put the matter out of her mind. Draco Malfoy's pain was of little consequence to her.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Original Prompt<strong>

**Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?br  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> Any  
><strong>Squicks:<strong> None  
><strong>Other comments:<strong> Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


	3. Chapter Three

_January 15, 2015  
>Author's Note: Reviews appreciated!<br>_

* * *

><p><strong>Haunted<strong>

**Chapter Three**

* * *

><p><em>Hey Hermione!<em>

_How's it going? Sorry for not writing as much as I said I would, but it's been busy over here and I'm sure you're busy studying anyway. Harry and I got the best luck when we were matched up with Kingsley as our mentor, but he doesn't cut us any slack even though we've known him ages now._

Hermione snorted. Ages? A few short years of rebel affiliation did not suggest the kind of familiarity Ron implied, but she smiled at the letter anyway. Ron felt important, and she could just see him strutting down the halls of the Ministry as if he ran the place just because he and his parents knew most of the biggest players in the Battle of Hogwarts—Harry, of course, being the _key_ player.

_Harry thinks Kingsley wants to avoid showing favoritism to The-Boy-Who-Lived. It'd set a bad example for the other recruits. I reckon he's right, but come on! The man who defeated Voldemort deserves a little special treatment, right?_

She read between the lines: The man who defeated Voldemort… and his best friend, surely.

_Training is brutal but it'll be worth it when we finally get out in the field. I can't wait to catch the buggers who are still at large. But Kingsley says—_

Hermione rolled her eyes. She had a feeling she'd be hearing a lot about what Kingsley says.

_—new recruits don't go out in the field for the first three months of training! Don't they know that Harry and I are pros at this by now? Anyway, I've got to go. Mum's screeching about the gnomes. Apparently, they got the idea into their heads to try to invade the house, and Mum wants to make sure we take care of them before they kick us out of our beds._

_Try to have a little fun, okay? You could sit your NEWTs tomorrow and pass them all with Os, so don't study too hard. And tell Ginny to stop sending Harry kisses. I'm always in the line of fire when I take your letters from Pig._

The last inch of the parchment was blank, not even a salutation or signature to complete the letter. Hermione's heart sank until she flipped the parchment over and saw a messy scrawl on the back.

_PS: It's really not the same without you. Wish you were here._

_Love,_  
><em>Ron<em>

She held her breath as she stared at the last sentence. _Wish you were here._ He missed her! And then her eyes were drawn to the word "love," and her heart, which had just sunk a moment ago, inflated and lifted like a helium balloon in her ribcage. Did he really love her? Just imagining he did made Hermione giddy like the girls she used to scoff at.

"What are you smiling about?" Ginny asked, staring at Hermione through sly, knowing eyes. She had a letter from Harry in her own hands, delivered simultaneously with Ron's via Pigwidgeon.

The Head Girl composed her features and folded the letter carefully, the same way Ron had folded it originally. She could almost feel the ghost of his hands over hers, matching each turn and crease of the parchment. Later, before bed, she would take a better look at his words to see if he'd left any hints of his feelings for her between his talk about Auror training. Unfortunately, the summer had been too busy with post-war matters: funerals in abundance, trials, even ceremonies honoring the heroes of the final battle. Hermione had even made a short, disastrous trip to Australia. With everything going on, she and Ron hadn't had much time to talk about what they were to each other, but every night, she replayed their shared kiss in her head, wondering where she'd got the audacity to throw herself at Ron in the middle of a battle the way she'd done.

"Nothing much," Hermione finally answered. "It sounds like they're having a grand time. What does Harry say?"

Ginny's ears went from pale and freckled to tomato red in an instant, and the sight made Hermione miss Ron more.

However, unlike Ron, Ginny wasn't bashful in the slightest. Her blush might have revealed her true embarrassment or pleasure, but her expression hid whatever emotion the question conjured in her. She only allowed herself a small smile, smug the way it lifted on one side. "He says Ron's got an inflated ego, but that's not shocking news in the slightest."

Both girls snorted at the idea of a modest Ron and then lapsed into silence. When not embroiled in the drama of her general dislike among the students, Hermione tended to yearn, and Ron's letter made her yearn for so many things. Stability, safety, comfort, and companionship were what she craved every night when she was alone in bed, and she envisioned those things wrapped up in a Ron Weasley package.

But yearning wasn't practical, and if Hermione was anything, she was practical. She constantly battled the what ifs and the daydreams because, as Professor Dumbledore had told Harry once, it did not do to dwell on dreams, lest she forget to live—and forget the lives recently lost. How could she feel so much happiness imagining a future with Ron when his brother and many of their friends had died only four months ago? How could she possibly allow herself to feel pleasure when students continued to suffer inside Hogwarts's safe walls?

How could she forget her own parents, who were still wandering around Australia without any memory of their only daughter?

"So why did you come back?" Ginny asked, shattering the silence into which they'd fallen.

Hermione shook her head to clear her mind. Her thoughts were always fluctuating between hope for the future and despair for the past. The present was just depressingly static.

"Come back?" she asked, confused.

"To Hogwarts. You were offered a job at the Ministry, too, weren't you? So why come back?" The casual way Ginny asked the question put Hermione on alert. Ginny's gaze sought Hermione's, challenging her in a way.

Hermione frowned, wondering where this was going. Even though the heavy, humid weather didn't warrant it, she suddenly wished for a fire in the grate. She wasn't sure if the common room had just become colder, or if she had.

"I haven't taken my NEWTs. I can't get a job without NEWTs."

"But you were offered one without them. Why not just take it?"

Now Hermione had an inkling of what was troubling Ginny. In the middle of the summer, when Ron and Harry had announced their plans to become Aurors instead of finishing school, Mrs. Weasley, in confused anguish, had begged and demanded them to reconsider. When it had become obvious that they would follow their own path, she had diverted her attention to Ginny, reinforcing as often as possible the necessity for Ginny to return to Hogwarts. At the time, Hermione had attributed Ginny's dour attitude to being separated from Harry again, but now hindsight made the emotion clear.

Ginny would have given anything to have quit Hogwarts, too. Not to be with Harry, but to avoid the castle and the horrors she'd faced within the walls that last year. Suddenly, Hermione could see it all in her face, especially the bitterness and fright that lingered in the challenge in her eyes. She resented Harry and Ron for taking the opportunity to leave Hogwarts—and she resented Hermione for not taking it.

Hermione was a truthful person with no skill for lies, but even so, opening herself up to someone she wasn't sure even liked her made her feel vulnerable. She wanted to lie, but Ginny needed to hear the real reason Hermione had returned.

"What if…" she started. She licked her dry lips, and stared into the empty fireplace. The squishy armchair she was sitting in suddenly felt like a trap, not a comfort. "What if I'd taken the job and they realized I wasn't good enough? Yes, I helped Harry defeat Voldemort in a way. I helped keep Harry alive, and over the years, I've studied in such excess that I already know more than most seventh years—or so I'm told." That had been Ron's argument for Hermione giving up on her NEWTs. The memory of him trying to convince her made the corners of her lips lift. She had interpreted his argument as reluctance to part from her, and even though Hermione hadn't wanted to leave him either, she'd still returned to Hogwarts.

"But if I have my NEWTs results, I'll have proof that I'm good enough for any career I seek," she said, her voice gone a little softer in embarrassment. "They won't be able to say I don't belong."

Silence followed that statement, prompting Hermione to look up and gauge Ginny's reaction. There was a little crease in the other girl's brow and a softening in her eyes that looked too much like pity but could have been understanding. Finally, Ginny reached over from her armchair to place her hand on Hermione's shoulder, and Hermione took comfort in it. So much so that her next inhale wavered on the edge of a sob.

"It's a sad world we live in if you don't belong in it while people like the Malfoys do. Chin up, Hermione," Ginny said, a smile lighting her face as her hand returned to the confines of her own chair. "You are more gifted and deserving than you understand."

* * *

><p>Malfoy's limping was more pronounced when he arrived outside the entrance to the Headmistress's office later that night. For a moment, Hermione wondered if the wound was festering and why he didn't get it healed, but then she stiffened her spine, a frown forming on her face as Malfoy approached her. She didn't care about his well-being. He didn't deserve her concern.<p>

"Since when has the Head Girl had detention-granting privileges?" Malfoy asked. His face displayed no emotion except the contempt in his scowl, so it didn't seem as though his limpy leg pained him. Not that Hermione cared. At all.

"If you had come to any of the Prefect meetings since you'd been made a Prefect fifth year, you'd know all about what privileges the Head Boy and Girl have." She turned on her heel, leaving Malfoy to limp along behind her, and she couldn't tell if he was exaggerating the limp in order to win her sympathy—something he'd done before, when Buckbeak had attacked him in their third year—or if he was truly too wounded to walk normally. She ignored it, focusing instead on their destination and getting there without attacking him or being attacked again. Her wand was just within reach, in the holster strapped to her arm, her reflexes primed for any emergency.

"I've been a bit busy the last couple years. Didn't seem very important at the time." His tone was neutral, but his voice was low.

"I guess Prefect responsibilities seem quite trivial when you're plotting how to smuggle Death Eaters into the castle," she snarled.

He stopped in the middle of the corridor, his teeth bared and his fists clenched at his side. "That's not all I was doing!"

Hermione spun around, her wand in her hand just in case. "Oh? Please, enlighten me. What else were you doing?"

She took deep pleasure in the way his mouth opened and closed wordlessly, his guilt apparent in his silence. There was no explanation that she would accept for his behavior during the entirety of their acquaintance, but especially in the last two years. He was just a bad seed from a bad family, and it was too late to fix him, if he'd ever been fixable.

The blush that warmed his pale cheeks provoked Hermione into further goading. She couldn't help herself. She never had been able to stop words from coming out of her mouth once she thought them.

"That's right," she said as if suddenly remembering something. She took a step closer to him where he stood frozen. "Sixth year you plotted to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts, seventh year you helped them control it, and now you're pathetic and powerless because Harry defeated the one man who made your family scary. And I'm not talking about your father."

His whole body shook with such force that Hermione might have thought there was an earthquake if she hadn't felt the stable ground beneath her own feet. He closed his eyes and said through clenched teeth, his voice soft and controlled, "Don't talk about my father. You don't know anything."

"I know how your family will do anything it can to save its own hide," she taunted as he allowed her to invade his personal space. "I heard your family testify at your trial, and I know it was a load of rubbish."

His eyes bored down into hers, cold and distant and simmering with a frosty anger. "Potter testified on our behalf."

"Harry," Hermione snarled, "wants to believe the best of everyone. I know why he thinks you and your parents aren't as bad as everyone thinks they are. I know he thinks you've _changed_, but I'm not so easily fooled!"

She dug a pointy finger into his shoulder blade, nearly knocking him off balance with the force of her emotion. If she could have used him as a punching bag, she would have. She needed some kind of release to ease the emotions rising to a boil inside her.

"I won't be fooled by the likes of you. I… I want to prevent people like you from ever abusing your position and power again. It would be stupid of us to welcome you back into the fold, after everything your family has done."

She held his gaze, refusing to blink, refusing to be the first to look away, and she saw exactly when the anger thawed, turning into a calculating curiosity.

"_Oh_," he said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "'You', 'us'. I see what this is all about."

"What?" she asked, huffing in irritation.

"Oh, no. I won't give you the satisfaction of a response. I'm going to hold onto what I know until it benefits me." He chuckled, and the sound raked against her nerves even more.

"You can bugger yourself, then. Let's go. You still have a detention to serve."

She stormed down the corridor feeling a little foolish herself. She didn't think he understood her at all; perhaps he was just saying he did to annoy her. Still, as she listened to the sounds of his footsteps echoing behind her, she couldn't help but feel as if he saw right through her.

The feeling lasted throughout Malfoy's detention shelving books in the library—by hand as Hermione still had his wand. It didn't matter how high he had to climb to put a certain book away or how far he had to reach, it didn't matter that he sneezed at least twenty times throughout the night thanks to the dust he disturbed while rearranging ancient tombs; he seemed to bloody enjoy himself too much for Hermione's satisfaction. More than once, she'd been tempted to push the ladder over while he was perched at the top of it, but she refrained. She only allowed herself to imagine what it might look like to watch him fall, clouds of dust erupting all around him, a stunned expression of disbelief frozen on his face. She opened the book she was holding to hide her smile, and once she had composed herself, handed the book up to Malfoy to shelve.

Three hours later, their ever-filling book cart empty and Madam Pince's workload significantly lighter, Hermione scowled at Malfoy and he smirked back. He seemed wholly unaffected while Hermione was on edge and unhappy for no reason she could discern. Malfoy had hardly spoken a word to her since arriving at the library, but she'd caught every now and then little shakes of his head, amused chuckles, and smirks, smirks, smirks galore. She was tired of his stupid face! Did the man wear no other expression?

"You can go," she said, turning away from him before he noticed her discontent. That was part of the problem though. Of course he'd already noticed it. He seemed to notice everything, and Hermione felt a little like she was blind to the obvious, like she'd been left out of the joke. But of course she _was_ the joke; she just hadn't heard the punchline.

"Aren't you going to warn me to behave? Stop fighting students younger than me, stop attacking our illustrious Head Girl, etc.?"

His voice loomed over her, just behind her. She wouldn't let him intimidate her. She rose up as tall as she could, but didn't turn around.

"No." She pulled his wand out from her sleeve. She did a double-take, staring at the hawthorn instrument in her hand, only really noticing it for the first time. "You got your original wand back," she said in disbelief.

"Yes," Malfoy hissed, snatching it from her. "Potter gave it back to me after my verdict."

Now she faced him, watching as he stroked the springy wood as if checking for defects. After hours of constant smirking, Hermione was happy to see his lips fall, the smirk replaced with a glower.

"I think he cursed it. It doesn't work the same anymore. Generous of him to return it damaged," he spat.

Hermione had forgotten that wand allegiance wasn't a widely known or understood concept, even after Harry's defeat of Voldemort had hinged on it. She didn't know what to say to him. She certainly didn't know if his wand would ever be loyal to him again, so what was the point in correcting his assumption if it wouldn't help?

"Why do you use it, then?"

His eyes blazed as he answered, his grip tightening around the wood. "Because it's _mine_."

His wand. His first symbol of power. He had abilities that distinguished himself and his family from Muggles, and the only way he could begin to learn to control and use those abilities was with the wand that had chosen him at the age of eleven. Without it, he was no better than a Squib. No wonder he was so attached.

And if it wasn't fully cooperating with him, maybe that was why he hadn't yet healed his leg. But why didn't he go to the Hospital Wing, then?

Hermione shrugged. "Well, you've got it back now. Please stop fighting with other students, and please don't bash my head into a wall again. Next time, I'll go straight to the headmistress."

"Like hell you will."

She pretended she hadn't heard his amused tone and left him standing in the middle of the stacks. But she knew he was right.

Hermione was fighting a battle against the students of Hogwarts—including Malfoy—and she couldn't win if she received help from anyone. If she was going to convince the students that she was on their side, she would have to do it alone, without coercion from another figure of authority. She couldn't demand their respect—they had to give it willingly.

Even as determination to win motivated her, her ghosts still whispered in her ear: what did any of her effort matter? What was the point?

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Original Prompt<strong>

**Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?br  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> Any  
><strong>Squicks:<strong> None  
><strong>Other comments:<strong> Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


	4. Chapter Four

_January 30, 2015  
>Author's Note: Reviews appreciated!<br>_

* * *

><p><strong>Haunted<strong>

**Chapter Four**

* * *

><p>The lake lapping against the shore presented a soothing backdrop to Hermione's studying, but her concentration for Ancient Runes was as fleeting as each wave. Just when she was on the cusp of grasping a concept or writing a note, another thought distracted her, drawing her away from her studies. The constant pull and tug should have frustrated her, but instead she was lulled into a numb state of thoughtlessness, despite the overabundance of thoughts in her head.<p>

She had her hair pinned up in a bun to keep the wind from blowing it in her face, but the breeze still managed to annoy her by rustling her roll of parchment. She had to keep an extra firm grip on her quill to prevent it from flying away like debris in a storm. Despite the annoyances of nature, Hermione had come to prefer studying outdoors. Her ghosts remained inside the castle, roaming the halls in search of a tortured student to haunt. Out here, she could focus on school work and other horrors besides the war.

Like Malfoy, for instance.

The git had been following her since his detention the week before, and he made no effort to hide the fact, either. Sure, they were taking similar classes, like Potions, Charms, and Transfiguration, but did he have to sit directly behind her in the classes they shared? Throughout their lessons, she had felt his eyes on the back of her head, and she couldn't help but imagine a self-satisfied grin on his stupid face. His very presence was distracting, even when he wasn't acknowledging her.

Then there were moments when she'd be alone in a corridor and gooseflesh would rise all over her arms. She didn't have to turn around to know he was there, watching her, smirking or smug or whatever expression he deemed most appropriate—and irksome—in that instant.

It had taken five encounters in various corridors, and twice in the library, for Hermione to finally snap and confront her stalker. "Why are you following me?" she'd yelled at him, her wand at the ready in her shaking hand. Whether the shaking was from fear or anger, she wasn't sure.

"It amuses me to see you try so hard," he replied.

While Hermione's body was on edge with tension, his was relaxed and nonchalant. Seeing his casualness made her see red. This was a game to him. _She_ was a game!

Her jaws were clenched together so tightly she could already feel a headache coming on, and she'd be damned if she began to cry in front of Malfoy as her eyes seemed to want to do. She certainly had no control over her unreasonable reaction to a man she had always loathed. Why this interaction had been the straw to break the manticore's back, she had no idea and no time to analyze it anyway.

"Did I upset you?" Malfoy asked, feigning concern in exaggeration.

And because she had snapped, truth leaked out of her cracks. Somehow she would have to patch herself up later, but for now, it flowed out before she could stop it, revealing more than she dared to reveal to her enemy.

"I have to try hard, Malfoy. Harder than anyone else here! If you cared about anything, you would be trying hard, too, but you don't care. Not about yourself or your studies or your reputation. Is there anything that you care for? Anything at all?"

Her chest heaved as she tried to control the sobs, but it was all too much—her education, her parents lost in Australia, her friends moving on with their lives without her, and, yes, the responsibility heaped on her shoulders by Professor McGonagall. When the Headmistress had offered her the Head Girl badge, there had been expectations to go along with it besides the usual ones of those in a position of leadership, and Hermione could not meet those expectations. She was there to help guide the students through their grief, and she couldn't even master her own.

Malfoy saw her falling apart at the seams and found it amusing. Everyone was looking to her for different reasons, and she wished she could just crawl into her bed and hide from the expectations, distrust, and amusement at her expense following her everywhere she went.

Malfoy lifted his hands and took a step back as if fearing an attack. "Relax, for fuck's sake," he said. "It's not like you're the only Mudblood who has to work hard to fit in. Circe's left tit, you're wound up so tight."

She marched on him now, invading his space, her wand tip pointed directly at his nose and crackling with red sparks in her agitation. "_You're_ one of the reasons I'm wound up this tight! Leave me alone! Stop stalking me! Please, just leave me alone!"

"I can't," he replied so seriously that she stepped away from him, gauging his expression and body language for a sign of that earlier nonchalance. But the amusement was gone; he was serious.

"Why not?" she asked despite herself.

In the first moment of discomposure she'd seen in him, his eyes darted away from her. "We have too much in common. No one likes us, Granger, so we have to stick together."

"I am too liked! People… people like me. They just don't like my position of authority over them."

Malfoy shook his head, and the corner of his lips lifted, but there wasn't laughter behind that half-grin. His demeanor and his following words implied pity. "Come on. Do you really think if Potter was here as Head Boy the students would be revolting against him? No, they wouldn't. And the ever-delightful Neville Longbottom doesn't seem to be having the same problems you are. No, you're unlikeable. Just like me. Birds of a feather."

The implication horrified Hermione and confirmed her worst fears. Those moments with Ginny, when she thought Ginny would rather be talking to someone else—rather be with someone else—maybe those moments hadn't been imagined. Maybe Ginny only tolerated her for Ron and Harry's sake. What if now that Harry was gone, everyone was treating Hermione exactly the way they would have treated her if Harry had never been her friend?

Was she really that odious?

"I'm… I'm nothing like you," she said, her voice wavering.

He shrugged. "You can go on believing that, or you can embrace it and move on."

"Is that how you're… coping? You've embraced that no one will ever like you, so you let them use you like a punching bag and talk about you in front of your face?"

His shoulder lifted in another shrug, and then he crossed his arms. Hermione would have read it as a defensive gesture, but Malfoy was a skilled Occlumens, as she knew, so the gesture could have meant anything… or nothing.

"I know who I am," he said. "It's about time you figured out who you are now that Potter and Weasley are gone."

A stabbing pain went through her chest at those words, the last of her fears confirmed. She'd been right before: Malfoy saw through everything, especially her. She might as well be a ghost for all her transparency.

That had been three days ago, and Malfoy still hadn't stopped following her around. Hermione liked to study by the lake to get away from the students and the castle, but she realized now that she'd returned to her new favorite haunt not out of a desire to study, but to clear her mind enough to consider Malfoy.

She should have been afraid of him, or at the very least annoyed. He was stalking her after all, by every definition of the word. But since that talk when he'd called her unlikeable, she couldn't help but feel… well, reassured by his presence. She didn't fully understand why, and she wasn't sure if there was another unidentifiable emotion there buried beneath the surface. She just knew that she wasn't scared of him, and while he was still a git, she wasn't too annoyed either.

It was only when she was inside the castle, bombarded by her responsibilities and memories, that irritation resurfaced. But the irritation was caused by all her ghosts and expectations; it was just easier to take her feelings out on Malfoy. He made himself such an accessible target.

"There you are, Hermione. I've been looking for you everywhere."

Lost in her thoughts, Hermione hadn't seen Luna approaching until the girl was sitting right next to her. She sighed as she rolled up her parchment and closed her textbooks, officially giving up on her revision. "Is something wrong?" she asked as she carefully put away her ink pot and quill.

"No. Ginny seemed worried. She thought you might be plagued with something." Luna's eyes narrowed, and then she pulled a pair of Spectrespecs out of her pocket and put them on. "She was right. You _have_ been plagued."

Hermione stifled the automatic response to roll her eyes. Before the war, Luna had been a frustrating acquaintance with whom Hermione couldn't see eye to eye. The Ravenclaw's flights of fancy clashed with her own rational outlook on life, and it used to baffle her how someone could believe such idiotic conspiracies. She began to understand when she, Harry, and Ron wound up at her home and had tea with her father, Xenophilius Lovegood. The madness had been nurtured from a young age, and Luna hadn't learned any better.

She'd seen the mural Luna had painted on her bedroom ceiling, portraits of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville connected by a chain of friendship. At first Hermione had felt pity for Luna, that she hadn't had a true friend until Dumbledore's Army had come along, but over time she'd begun to feel a real fondness for her as well. If anything, Luna was loyal and brave. She might have lived in a delusional world, but she never let that world get in the way of what mattered.

Hermione still felt a little uncomfortable around her because she couldn't trust herself not to argue if Luna tried to insist that some manufactured creature or conspiracy was real. Letting things go for the sake of peace was a skill that Hermione did not possess, and it was undoubtedly the number one reason she was so hated inside the castle now.

She decided to risk humoring Luna. "With what am I plagued, then?"

The Spectrespecs made Luna's already bulbous eyes appear even larger and changed their color from blue to rainbow-hued orbs.

"Doubt. Worry. And something else I can't quite pin down. It's zooming around your head too fast for me to recognize it."

"There's no earthly way you can see that with those glasses!" Hermione insisted, her cheeks burning. Maybe Malfoy wasn't the only one who could see right through her. Perhaps she really was as transparent as a ghost.

"Oh, no, I don't need the glasses to see how you're feeling. The whole castle is plagued with the same emotions. I just like the way the world looks when I wear them." She lifted the Spectrespecs over her eyes and then pushed them back down on her nose, back and forth as if comparing the views with and without the multi-colored lenses.

Hermione wished she could put on a pair of glasses and see the world in a different light. If only the world was as simple for her as it was for Luna. With a sudden pang, she wished Ron were there to tell her that everything would turn out okay in the illogical, go with the flow way that had always infuriated her before. Now, she would welcome such reassuring, if childish, comments.

She cleared her throat. "Why were you looking for me?"

Luna shrugged and rocked from side to side. Her hands were clasped loosely over her drawn knees, a blithe smile on her face as her eyes focused on something Hermione couldn't see.

"My mum always said that the things we lose have a way of coming back to us. So far that's been true for me, but I'm not so sure anymore. What do you think?"

The question startled Hermione so much that she didn't know how to answer. Her first instinct was to be reasonable and say that some things that are lost can never be returned, but it was clear that such an answer wasn't what Luna was looking for.

How did people comfort one another without flat out lying to their faces? Was it acceptable to lie for the sake of other people's feelings? She had to remind herself that some people couldn't handle emotions with logic like she could. She had to find another way.

"What… what makes you ask, Luna?"

Luna's gaze lowered to her knees, and with her dreamy stare shielded, she looked less odd, more normal, though the Spectrespecs still gave her an air of eccentricity. She just looked… sad. Hermione had seen her annoyed, angry, happy, but never sad.

"I haven't spoken to my father since the war. Since I found out how he tried to turn you and Ronald and Harry over to the Death Eaters."

Hermione's lips compressed, but she tried her best to reassure Luna, even if she didn't mean the words. "I'm sure he meant well." Her voice sounded hard and unconvincing, and she winced at the involuntary harshness.

But Luna nodded as if she hadn't heard the false note. "He did. I'm all the family he has left, and he's all mine. But that's no reason to betray my friends." She looked up at the sky, and Hermione wondered if there was another reason Luna had donned the Spectrespecs besides the reason she'd stated. "My mum was my best friend, you know. After she died, I thought I'd never have friends again. He could have found another way to save me."

Hermione silently agreed. She'd been so angry after they'd left the Lovegood residence, and not long after that they'd been captured by Snatchers and taken to Malfoy Manor. If one thing could be said about Luna Lovegood, it was that she was selfless and brave where her father was selfish and cowardly. She suddenly realized that Luna's bravery must have been a direct result of her feelings for her friends. Perhaps if she'd continued to only have her father for a companion she would have turned out just the same as him.

She patted Luna's arm awkwardly, uncertain of her reception, but Luna didn't pull away. "He was afraid, Luna. He wasn't thinking clearly. The war had the ability to bring out the worst or the best in people, and I think it mostly brought out the worst. It still does. You don't… you shouldn't punish him forever. Everything turned out all right, didn't it?"

Luna's lips curled up. "You're a very smart girl, Hermione, smarter than a lot of Ravenclaws, but I wouldn't say everything turned out all right."

Hermione figured she was teasing, but she corrected herself anyway. "No, I know. Um." Tears stung her eyes, but as she tried to blink them away, she knew she wouldn't succeed. "I'm going to tell you a secret now. One that not even Harry and Ron know."

Luna put her hand on top of Hermione's still resting on Luna's arm. She didn't look at the Head Girl, but Hermione knew she was listening.

"Remember when I went to Australia this summer? To find my parents? I told everyone that I found them and returned their memories, and they stayed in Australia as an extra precaution. In case of retaliation from escaped Death Eaters after the war."

"But you lied," Luna said.

Now tears spilled down Hermione's cheeks, but she didn't wipe them away because both of her hands were being grasped in Luna's light grip.

"Yes. I lied. I found them, but I couldn't reverse the spell. They called the police on me, thinking I was troubled or high because I waved a stick in their faces and said silly words. I told everyone I'd succeeded because I didn't want them to know I had failed."

"I knew!" Luna said brightly, one of her hands shifting to Hermione's back to rub circles on her shoulder blades. "I knew you were lying."

Hermione wasn't sure how that made her feel. If Luna had noticed, why hadn't anyone else? Or were Luna and Malfoy the only two people with this superpower to see right through her? Perhaps the rest of her friends had believed her because they hadn't wanted to see any other possibility. Or maybe they were dense. Hermione didn't know.

"Thank you for not telling anyone," she said with a sniffle. Now she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe, feeling foolish for falling apart so easily. She'd been trying to cheer up Luna somehow, and instead Luna had ended up comforting her.

"The point I was trying to make," she said, eyes tear-free now, "is that sometimes the things we lose don't come back to us. But if you have the ability to retrieve something you've lost, go after it. Don't let it go. Your father was wrong, Luna, but he was scared. Harry, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and I, we're all fine now, so you don't need to keep punishing him. Forgive him before he's gone forever."

Luna kept her gaze averted, and Hermione worried she'd said something tactless again. The logical answer she'd tried to suppress had spilled out of her mouth, as words had a tendency to do for her, and now she couldn't take them back.

But Luna's smile widened, and she took the Spectrespecs off, her eyes clear and beaming. "That's the kindest thing you've ever said to me. I'm going to go write him a letter right now!"

Before Hermione knew what was happening, Luna was leaning over and wrapping her in a tight embrace, and then she stood up and skipped back up to the castle, her long, dirty blonde hair swinging behind her.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Original Prompt<strong>

**Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> Any  
><strong>Squicks:<strong> None  
><strong>Other comments:<strong> Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


	5. Chapter Five

_February 14, 2015  
>Author's Note: Warning for blood in this chapter. Reviews appreciated!<br>_

* * *

><p><strong>Haunted<strong>

**Chapter Five**

* * *

><p>Sharing her secret with Luna had lifted a burden from Hermione's shoulders that she hadn't realized she'd been carrying. Even though she still had a multitude of problems, too many to deal with even if she knew how to, Hermione's mind felt a little clearer. She could focus on more pressing issues than her guilt over erasing her parents' memories and shipping them off to another continent. At the present time, she couldn't do anything to fix that, but she could do something about Malfoy. So the next time Hermione felt Malfoy's eyes on her, she approached him again, this time with a more level head.<p>

He'd followed her out of the Great Hall after dinner as she returned to the Gryffindor common room. In the seventh floor corridor, she turned a corner and then stopped and waited for him to make the same turn. Her lips twitched up into a smug smile as he nearly ran her over, his eyes wide in surprise. The shock passed quickly and his expression became neutral once more.

"Ambushing me?"

"Let's talk," Hermione said. Without giving him a chance to argue, she stalked down the corridor to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, and as he'd done for the last week, he followed her. As Malfoy waited with an impatient frown, she passed in front of the tapestry three times, wishing for a safe location to have a discussion with her enemy. On the wall across from the tapestry, a door appeared. It looked no different than any of the classroom doors, but Hermione still hesitated in front of it.

Malfoy came to stand beside her, moving no closer than he had to. When she peeked up at him, his eyes were intent on the door, his brows drawn low over his eyes. He was as reluctant to enter the room as she was. The last time they'd both been inside, a giant monster made of voracious fire created by Vincent Crabbe had nearly killed them. If Harry hadn't gone back for Malfoy, he would have died in the flames with Crabbe. She wondered if he owed Harry a life debt now like Peter Pettigrew had owed Harry. Did Malfoy even know?

Hermione was the first to move, reaching for the door handle and pushing it open before she had time to think of the consequences. Fiendfyre was one of only a few materials that had the ability to destroy a Horcrux, and she'd never wondered before if perhaps the Room of Requirement had also been destroyed in the last attack of Crabbe's life.

The room she entered was one she'd never been in before, but it was certainly intact, no char marks to be seen. The walls sloped around in a circle, like Gryffindor Tower, but the space inside was much smaller and more sparsely furnished than her comfortable common room. In fact, the only pieces of furniture were two arm chairs in the center of the circular floor facing each other as if in a standoff and a multitude of fluffy pillows and wooden shields leaning against the sloped wall. Portraits hung around the room, their occupants staring at Hermione and Malfoy with wide, expectant eyes.

"Who are you?" Hermione asked.

"Witnesses!" a woman in a portrait to the right of the door said. She'd been painted in dull, somber colors that contrasted with the pink, frilly dress she wore and her ringleted, yellow hair. In the background of her portrait, sheep bleated in support.

"Witnesses?" Malfoy asked.

"In case you attack me and leave me here to die," Hermione answered with a grim frown.

"Me attack you?" Malfoy replied in outrage. "What about what you would do to me? You did let six students beat the bloody hell out of me not too long ago, if you remember!"

She spun around, the color rising in her face in anger and embarrassment. "Well, you begged me to leave!"

"_Begged?_ Hardly!"

"And you slammed me up against a wall and tried to do me in!"

"I wouldn't have—"

"ENOOOUUUGH already!" the woman in the pastoral portrait groaned. "Jesus Christ, if it's not one thing it's another! At least shut the door before you begin dueling!"

Hermione stepped out of the doorway and Malfoy followed her into the room, both of them heated and raring for a go at each other. As soon as the door clicked shut, she said, "We won't be dueling." The portrait _hmph_ed—whether in disagreement or disappointment wasn't quite clear. "I just wanted to set some things straight."

"Then by all means, shall we?" Malfoy said with a gallant, if sarcastic, gesture towards the armchairs in the middle of the room.

Hermione eyed the selection of shields before she took a seat, but arming herself seemed like a good way to tempt fate. Provocation notwithstanding, she honestly didn't want to fight Malfoy. She'd never wanted to fight anyone if she could help it. The last few years had forced her to do things she'd never thought herself capable of, but if she had the choice, she would never choose violence if there was a better way.

Sitting in his chair, his legs sprawled to the sides and one of his infuriating smirks on his face, he asked, "Now what's this all about?"

Hermione breathed in through her nose and held her breath for a moment before releasing it. Sometimes the simple act of breathing brought her some perspective. She'd never thought herself an emotional creature, but that was before she'd met Ron. Now she knew that her emotions sometimes got the best of her. Stabilizing her breathing was one way to give control back to her mind before she did something else she would regret.

"I don't know what you're about, but I wanted you to know that I will find out. Unless you want to go ahead and tell me."

She couldn't tell if the confusion on his face was genuine or not, but his wrinkled brow and condescending glare set off alarm bells.

"What I'm about?" he said. "Are you planning to interrogate me?"

"That would be stupid," she replied. "I'd be daft to ask you questions and expect an honest answer—even if you weren't an Occlumens."

He bristled. "How do you know that?"

Raising her nose a little higher in the air, she said, "That doesn't matter now. I just want you to answer one thing for me. If you answer honestly, I'll help you out. If you lie to me or refuse to answer, I won't."

She could tell he was unnerved by her knowledge of him by the way his hands clenched the arms of his chair, and he'd sat up a little straighter as if she finally deserved his full attention. Still, he laughed in that scoffing way that was supposed to make her feel foolish.

"With what? What could you possibly do to help me?"

She nodded toward his legs. "Your injury. Tell me why it hasn't been healed and I'll heal it for you. Lie or refuse and you can continue to suffer. Your choice."

He scoffed at her, his smirk returning, but there was something about his stiff expression that boosted Hermione's confidence.

"Who says it hasn't been healed already?"

"Come on, Malfoy; I saw the cut. It ran deep and bled for who knows how long. You have a limp now, did you know? If you'd healed it or received treatment for it, you wouldn't be limping. And Madame Pomfrey's healed worse, believe me, so don't say it _is_ fully healed. We both know that's a lie."

Her heart beat a little harder, sending echoing reverberations into her throat, as Malfoy's eyes grew darker. All sign of condescension and amusement were gone from his face, and Hermione's lips twitched up in an expression of smug success for unsettling him.

"Since when have you been a Legilimens?" he asked, his teeth clenched together. A vein in his temple throbbed and rage burned in his eyes.

"I'm just observant."

He sneered. "Look at you. You've been acting more like a Slytherin these last few weeks. I just don't understand what you get out of this deal. A job well done for healing your enemy?" His eyes brightened with epiphany. "Oh. That's what it is, isn't it? A chance to redeem yourself. You still feel guilty for leaving me to the mercy of a mob, and this is your chance to correct your mistake. Well, I won't bite. In fact, _you_ can bite my arse."

"As delightful as that sounds, I think I'll pass," she said, rising from her chair. She looked down her nose at him and she felt powerful towering over his injured body.

"I'll figure out why you let those students beat you up. It's not like you had a fighting chance. I had your wand, and before that it had already been taken from you. To me, it looked like you wanted to be bloodied and injured, but you didn't rat on them, did you? I would have heard. So you didn't provoke them to attack you in order to get them in trouble. And you didn't treat your leg, either, so maybe you _wanted_ to be hurt. Maybe…" And her own epiphany came to her, though she didn't know if it was a wild idea on her part or if there was any truth to it. "Maybe if you're physically hurt, you won't have to think about the war. What you did. Your lot in life now. Maybe the pain distracts you from how pathetic you are."

His limbs trembled. That's what she noticed most. His whole body seemed to be wracked with tremors of a deep emotion. The rage was still there, frozen into his expression, but his body revealed his true feelings even though she couldn't interpret them.

"That's a nice theory," he said after several moments of tense silence, in which their eyes had not broken contact, "but a little too dramatic for me. Nice try though. Stick to being a bitch—you're better at that than psychology."

"Oh, Malfoy," she said with a sigh, "you flatter me."

Then she left him in the Room of Requirement, trembling in his chair.

* * *

><p>Hermione was rather proud of the way she'd handled herself the day before, even if her hands had shaken a little after Malfoy had called her a bitch. She'd needed to remind herself that he'd been backed into a corner and had attempted to hurt her however he could. Gross name-calling came naturally to him. That didn't mean what he said was <em>true<em>.

Sometimes she wondered if she was a… bitch without meaning to be. Maybe that's why no one liked her. Maybe that's why she found it so hard to connect to other people. He had hit a sore spot for her, but the high of leaving him in her dust, unnerved and affected by _her_ for once, overrode her insecurities.

She didn't dwell on the encounter too much as she composed a letter to Ron, her heart beating erratically with each stroke of her quill. As dark and hopeless as she'd begun to feel there at Hogwarts, the thought of Ron or one of his letters allowed her to escape her ghosts and feel some rare joy. If pain distracted Malfoy from his ghosts of the war, the thought of Ron was hers.

_Dear Ron,_

Was that too formal? She crossed out what she'd written. Would leaving out the greeting all together be too casual? Biting her lip, she added it back in, still undecided on the proper greeting.

_Dear Ron Dear Ron,_

Thank you for the box of chocolates and the books! Give my thanks to Harry and your mum as well. I can't wait to wear my new scarf when the castle gets chillier, and your mum's sweet buns have always been my favorites. Ginny, Neville, Luna and I celebrated my birthday with Kreacher in the kitchens—

Her three friends had surprised her with a cake baked and decorated quite decadently by Kreacher. If her parents had been around to see, they would have been scandalized by all the chocolates and sweets Hermione had consumed.

_—so I didn't feel quite as lonely as I could have. I hope you and Harry are learning a lot. Please be careful. I worry about you—both of you. Most of the lowlier Death Eaters might try to slither away and avoid conflict, but you never know how many were as fanatical as Bellatrix Lestrange and Barty Crouch, Jr. If you remember, the Longbottoms had been tortured after You-Know-Who Voldemort lost his power in 1981, and they'd been trained and highly talented Aurors._

I guess what I'm trying to say is… please try to stay out of trouble. I know the three of us have had a knack for finding danger over the years, and things may seem safer now that Voldemort is gone. But this is the time when his followers will feel most desperate. Please remember your training and don't try to be the hero. I need you

She blinked at the words uncomprehendingly for a moment. She'd let her emotions get the best of her and had written what she truly felt, but were they words Ron needed to read? Did he want to read them? Her quill hovered over the "I," just about to strike those three dangerous words out. Then she thought better of it. If she'd learned anything in the last three weeks, it was that hiding her emotions made her look like an unlikeable, tactless bitch. Harry and Ron knew her better than anyone, but she still didn't want to give Ron any reason to think of her that way. Besides, if she wanted to further her relationship with him, maybe she needed to take some initiative.

_I need you to stay safe._

Love,  
>Hermione<p>

PS: Quidditch has been rubbish. Gryffindor lost to Ravenclaw yesterday.

Most of the students were spending their Sunday afternoon outside. It was a warm day, with a crisp, gentle breeze. The kind of day that tasted like autumn and reminded everyone that summer days were dwindling. The corridors and staircases leading up to the Owlery were deserted, and Hermione let herself smile as she ambled through the castle.

As she tied her letter to the leg of one of the school's owls, the door to the Owlery opened, and Malfoy stood at the entrance, his face forbidding. Her lips instantly dropped, but she finished sending the owl off before turning her attention to him, her arms crossed protectively over her chest.

"I couldn't go to the Hospital Wing or Madame Pomfrey would have reported me," he said by way of greeting.

"What?" Hermione asked, brows creasing in confusion.

"Why my leg hasn't been healed. I can't do it myself, and if I'd seen Madame Pomfrey, she would have reported me to McGonagall for fighting, and _she_ would have reported me to the Ministry."

Hermione shook her head slowly, trying to understand his explanation. "But you weren't fighting. You were attacked!"

"It doesn't matter," he answered with a shrug. "No one would believe me if I claimed I hadn't provoked them, even if it was the truth."

"Is it the truth?"

His eyes narrowed, and he hissed out, "Yes, it is. _They_ attacked _me_. _They_ disarmed _me_ before I could even draw my wand."

"Okay, okay, you didn't provoke them," she conceded.

He looked away in agitation, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. "It doesn't matter what the truth was. If the Ministry got wind that I was involved in a fight, I'd be kicked out of school and arrested. Those were the terms of my probation, remember? I know McGonagall told you and Longbottom about it. Now, will you heal me?"

Hermione glanced out the window and sighed. The owl was long gone, but it carried the only happiness she could find in the castle, even though Ron was miles away, too far to truly be a part of her life now. She turned her back on her escaping joy and said to her expectant enemy, "I need to get a few things from Gryffindor Tower first. Meet me outside the Room of Requirement again in an hour."

* * *

><p>They stepped inside the same circular room they'd used for their previous discussion, but the furnishings had completely changed. Gone were the shields and pillows that had edged the room days ago. A large, empty fireplace was set into the sloped wall across from the entrance, a stack of firewood on the hearth. The portraits were still hanging on the wall as witnesses, but the two armchairs in the center of the room had been switched out for a hospital bed and a wooden chair to the right. Tables and cabinets adorned the edges of the walls with colorful vials, books, and instruments that might have been seen in the Hospital Wing.<p>

"Well," Hermione started. She closed the door behind them and then eyed Malfoy with haughty authority. "Hop up on the bed, then."

He didn't say anything as he laid down but stared up at the ceiling silently.

Hermione took a seat in the chair next to the bed and opened her magically extended beaded handbag. If her hands shook a little from the memories associated with the bag, she didn't acknowledge it, but she couldn't help but feel like the room was suddenly crowded with unwanted ghosts.

"Maybe I should take a look at the injury first," she said in an unsteady voice as she deposited the bag onto the bedside table.

Malfoy didn't seem to notice the state of her nerves as he was still staring upwards, his lips tight and his brows creased. "You think?"

"Er, I'm going to have to look under your robes," she said, her face beet red.

A smirk came to his lips, but he still avoided her eyes, for which she was thankful. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm not in the habit of going bare-arsed. I'm decent."

She snorted despite herself, her lips twitching up in a smile. His remark had cleared the air, and she pulled his robes up his left leg with less embarrassment, carefully keeping his pelvic region covered nonetheless.

She didn't gasp, but her stomach lurched at the sight before her. One trembling hand touched the end of the cut, now nearly a scar, where it wrapped around the inside of his knee. The gash curled around his leg in a jagged line to the front of his thigh, almost all the way up to the outside of his hip. It wasn't a clean cut. It looked like someone had taken a knife and sliced him as slowly and roughly as possible, but it had to have been done with a wand, right? As her fingers whispered over the still-healing wound, goosebumps rose in his flesh, making the hair on his thighs stand straight up. Malfoy even sucked his breath in with a loud hiss, but his head was turned away, refusing to look at her or the injury.

The cut itself was red and puckered, closed but still oozing a bit, definitely inflamed. This was worse than when she had splinched Ron. At least Ron had been unconscious while Hermione had healed him.

Her fingers slowly traced up to the top of the wound, and Malfoy released his breath with a hiss.

_"Granger!"_ he warned, his eyes suddenly wide open and focused on her.

"What?" she asked, bemused by his reaction.

"Stop with the touching and get on with the healing!"

She looked down at her hand and realized how close it was to his crotch—and how gently she'd been caressing his skin. Heat rushed to her head so fast she felt dizzy, but she snatched her hand away, completely mortified even though she hadn't meant to feel Malfoy up. She averted her eyes from his groin, praying silently for a lack of reaction to her in _that_ area.

Clearing her throat and steadying her breath, she said, "I can't heal it like this. I'm going to have to cut it back open."

Malfoy sat straight up. _"What?"_ If he'd involuntarily felt amorous before, her words certainly would have cooled the situation in an instant.

"It's already mostly closed. If I'm going to heal it, I'll need to clean the wound and let the medicine soak in. It will get infected if it stays like this," she explained calmly and rationally. "More infected," she amended with a wary look at the swollen gash.

While Malfoy made tortured faces, she pulled her handbag back into her lap and rummaged around inside it, looking for the potions she would need for the job. Everything she'd packed for Harry's Horcrux search was still inside, virtually untouched since the fall of Voldemort. A foggy, blue vial rolled out from under her fingertips to the corner of the bag, and Hermione reached inside, her arm entrenched up to her shoulder, to pull it out. "I can give you a sleeping potion so that you aren't conscious while I work," she said as she studied the label.

"So you can carve your name into my leg? I don't think so," was his charming, snappy response.

Hermione pointedly refused to let her eyes wander to her inner forearm, where her Mudblood brand still shone pearly white on her skin. With a start, she realized that Malfoy was branded as well. During his trial the past summer, he'd had to show his Dark Mark to the court as evidence. Like the other Death Eaters who had stood trial, Malfoy's Mark had faded and turned into a scar, the color of its lines now pink instead of black. Hermione hadn't seen the Mark personally since their return to Hogwarts, for which she was thankful, but she'd seen it from a distance as a member of the audience at his trial. Naturally, since returning to Hogwarts, he kept his arm carefully covered at all times.

"I promise, the last thing I want is to be anywhere on you," she replied, annoyed. "But if you won't take the sleeping draught, you'll just have to take the pain."

"Fine," he replied stoically as he crossed his arms protectively over his chest.

Hermione got up to inspect the tools the Room of Requirement had provided for her use and found a scalpel, alcohol disinfectant, and gauze. She brought them all back to Malfoy's bedside, laying them out clearly on the side table.

"Okay," she said, as much to herself as to him. She doused some gauze in disinfectant and wiped down the line of the cut, the strong smell of the alcohol burning her nose. She wondered if the room had provided Muggle disinfectant instead of a potion for her benefit. Even now, after seven years in the wizarding world, sometimes Muggle methods of healing felt safer to her than the magic forms, especially when she wasn't quite sure what she was doing.

She didn't tell Malfoy that she wasn't particularly trained in Healing. He would have freaked out and refused to be treated. But while she, Harry, and Ron had been on the run, she had read books on magical Healing that she had packed in her beaded bag, knowing that their task was going to be dangerous and that they might have been on their own for most of their journey. Good thing she had prepared sufficiently. She had never imagined how alone the three of them would be. She'd known that their task would have isolated them, but the Death Eaters' take-over of the Ministry had made them outlaws.

Recalling the chapter on Muggle surgery she had read in the _Sushruta Samhita_, she took a steady breath to steady her hands, and then gently pierced the skin at the top of Malfoy's scar, near his hip. He flinched and hissed, but after a moment, he stilled, his hands clenched in the bed sheets, and Hermione continued to trace the cut all the way down to his knee with the scalpel. Blood ran down his leg, staining the sheets under him, and Hermione wiped it up when it got in the way, but didn't worry herself over the red rivulets that striped his leg, taking the shape of bloody, external veins.

"Oh my!" a voice said from the painting hanging right above the bed. Most of the subjects of the paintings hanging around the room had huddled into this one frame to observe—to its original occupant's annoyance.

"I hope she knows what she's doing!" Little Bo Peep said dubiously.

"Is he supposed to bleed that much?" another voice asked.

Hermione looked up. "Would you lot please shut up? I'm trying to concentrate."

Frowns were shared inside the crowded painting, but, thankfully, they kept their comments to themselves.

After Hermione opened the wound, she cleaned it up and dabbed some essence of dittany, the last of her store from the Horcrux search, down his leg. There wasn't much of the brown potion left, so she had to apply it in a thinner layer than she would have liked. She bit her lip, hoping it would be enough. What would Malfoy do to her if she promised to heal him but couldn't due to a lack of materials? _She_ wouldn't be able to forgive herself for breaking her promise.

As she dabbed the potion over the wound, Malfoy's body began to tremble. The shaking continued as she wrapped his leg in gauze, and nonsensical words of comfort spilled out of her mouth as a result, trying to quell the tremors and soothe him. Her hands gentled on his leg. As she wrapped the gauze around his thigh, she slowed her movements and made comforting gestures. One hand caressed his knee as she pulled the wrap under his leg. Fingers fluttered over his skin, distracting him from the pain.

When she finished dressing the wound, she sat back, but Malfoy continued to shake.

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

"What do you think?" he replied as he grit his teeth, his eyes clenched shut.

She dug around inside her beaded bag for a bit until she found a Calming Draught.

"Here."

He took the vial from her but with mistrust in his eyes. "What is it?"

"A Calming Draught." He still seemed wary, so she held up her hands. "Promise."

Even though he still didn't seem to trust her, he drank the potion, and that said more to Hermione about his desperation than anything else could have.

Instantly, the tremors began to subside, and Malfoy laid back in the bed as if all his bones had disintegrated. His eyes fluttered, and Hermione could tell he was fighting to keep them open. The potion itself didn't cause drowsiness, but it allowed him to relax enough to be able to sleep. It seemed to her that he needed as much sleep as he could get. His eye was still a little puffy and the scratches on his face hadn't completely healed from his fight a week ago. Such shallow wounds should only require time, rest, and ice to heal, but if he wasn't sleeping or using an ice pack for his yes, then the healing process would take longer.

Malfoy's eyes drooped closed. "Are you going to leave me here?" he asked, his voice already heavy with sleep.

Hermione hesitated. She _had_ planned to leave as soon as she'd finished treating him, but she'd also expected him to get up and walk out on his own. Even though he was a hateful git who didn't deserve her kindness, she would feel guilty if she left him there alone.

"Not if you don't want me to," she answered.

His left hand turned over, obviously inviting her to hold it, and she wondered how out of it Malfoy was for him to seek her comfort.

But she gave it to him, placing her hand in his and grasping his ice cold fingers until they warmed.

She tried to make herself as comfortable as she could in her uncushioned wooden chair, and as Malfoy drifted off to sleep, she couldn't help but stroke the skin of his arm gently. When he began to snore, she let herself run her fingers through his hair, caressing his scalp the way her mother used to soothe her. It was all she knew how to do, and she only let herself do it because he wasn't conscious to witness her tenderness.

She was surprised when he began to groan in his sleep, his limbs twitching. As she entwined her fingers in his, soothing him enough to settle him, she wondered what kind of nightmares plagued him enough to overcome the effects of a Calming Draught—and whether they were similar to her own.

* * *

><p>Hermione had released his hand as soon as he began to stir from his slumber, unsure of his reaction to her touching him with such intimacy. In the hour it had taken him to awake, she'd had plenty of time to inspect him while he slept. At some point, he'd stopped fidgeting and groaning, and the creases in his brow had smoothed out. Even while unconscious, he'd still looked spoiled and privileged, exactly like the git he always was when awake. But there was something innocent about him, too. Maybe the lack of a smirk or the absence of condescension in his expression left room for the innocence. He reminded her of a naughty child who constantly wreaked havoc during the day, but at night, when exhausted and clutching a teddy bear to his chest, it was difficult to deny he was still just a child, no matter how naughty.<p>

When Malfoy began to wake, Hermione had released her hold on him and exited the room. She'd left before he'd become fully conscious.

Now, lying in bed hours later, her mind was in turmoil. Healing Malfoy had been the right thing to do. He had been completely right about her (as always). She _had_been attempting to assuage her guilt for letting those students attack him, and she'd used the thinnest excuse possible to try to accomplish her goal. Not that she wasn't curious as to why he hadn't received treatment for his leg. That question had concerned her more than she cared to admit, but the truth had been less important to her than fixing her wrong.

She'd done the right thing… and yet she felt as if she'd betrayed the students of Hogwarts and the memories of those that had fallen in the war. What would Dennis Creevey think if he knew that she'd healed Malfoy's wounds after allowing Dennis and his friends to wound him in the first place? Dennis and the other five students had been kinder to her since that night—kinder as in they had shown indifference toward her instead of outright dislike—but they would certainly take up their torches and pitchforks if they knew what she'd done for a Death Eater. Never mind the rest of the students in the school who hadn't been given a reprieve to abuse Malfoy like she'd given Dennis's mob.

Again she asked herself, what had they fought the war for? The answer floated just out of her reach, keeping her dreams at bay as it drew the ghosts back in.

* * *

><p><strong>TBC<strong>

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: My Google-fu led me to information about the Sushruta Samhita, which is a Classical Sanskrit medical text from the 6th Century BC.<em>

**Original Prompt**

**Pairing(s):** Draco/Hermione  
><strong>Prompt:<strong> Soon after they return to Hogwarts for their eighth year of schooling, Hermione comes across Draco being taunted and tortured by a mob of students of all ages. All the horrible memories of her own torture in Malfoy Manor come flooding to the forefront of her mind. What does she do?  
><strong>Preferred rating:<strong> Any  
><strong>Squicks:<strong> None  
><strong>Other comments:<strong> Go dark or as hopeful as you want.


End file.
